The present application relates generally to providing media streams from Internet sites.
The World Wide Web (WWW) is conventionally conceived as a system in which a user navigates between text documents on different servers by means of hypertext links. Activating a hypertext link causes another page, also composed of text and links, to be delivered to the client computer. Thus, on the WWW, a user's experience is determined by the order in which the user clicks on links.
In general, non-text objects are treated as illustrations placed on text pages. Although WWW standards include an open ended specification for handling multimedia files that allows media objects to be referenced by hypertext links, those references are treated no differently than hypertext links to pages and illustrations. Typically, three techniques are used to access multimedia files. First, a link can point to a special media file that requires a special player program to produce the images and sounds of the media file. Second, the link can point to a player program that starts independently of the web browser to play the media file. The interface provided by the player program controls the media file. Third, the link can point to a player program embedded in the page. In this case, the user can click on the link to choose which media file to play without leaving the page. However, the size of the image displayed and the controls available to the user are chosen by the web page designer.
The currently available tools that can be used to synchronize the presentation of multimedia components include proprietary languages, such as Macromedia's Lingo and Apple's Hypercard, and scripting languages, such as ECMAScript (JavaScript). In recognition of the difficulty of multimedia authoring with the currently available tools, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has proposed a new language called the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL).
The WWW was developed for utility in the assembly and cross referencing of text content documents with user freedom in navigation. On the other hand, multimedia development has focused on interactive but canned content with limited use options that are defined by the author. Thus, multimedia on the web has been subject to conflicting developmental pressures, and has not developed a coherent presentation format.